About being 20-something and reading books

Without being controversial, I was browsing the Linkedin news (loosing my time?) and came through an article about 'being around 20 years old and reading 5 books'. And, sorry, I can't leave it, I need to express my disagreement on those kind of advices (apologies to the author of the post).

1. Its is so striking to mention 5 books and being around the twenties...but, oh, yes, I know. Reading is not hype anymore, it requires attention and intellectual effort - so, don't read too much. You could be 20 years old and have an headache;

2. Five books...twenty years...Hell, yes. That's a math. One book every two years ('cause you need to have finished your reading list before being old (that's reaching the canonical age of 30); again: one book every 24 months of your life is a real personal challenge.

3. And now comes the list itself: the top first one is Paul Coehlo's Alchemist, which is, I agree on that one, a great book. Now being the one that you should put on such a scarce resource (that being the reading as such), I'm not sure. It's a good book, with a lot of philosophical, high-level, generic life statements that can't hurt, but it's not a real game changer (you have a lot of those kind of texts available: Sun-Tzu, Confucius, Tite-Live, Buddha,...you name it);

4. ...and the four other titles are vague biographies about the Starbucks founder, the need for happiness in life etc etc.

Really amazing to conclude that you have no historic references, a very poor geographical spread of the authors (that's Brazil and UK/US) and no need to add any other linguistic references at all (oh, yes, true. Japanese, Arabic cultures or Europeans haven't written a lot about Starbucks, business and the moral obligation to live a happy life). But that was not explained on the Internet.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AI and ethics

Discussing AI's ethical role in our lives, its future impact, and societal changes has become common. One critical issue often overlooked is how AI will influence global power dynamics, with each continent striving to dominate algorithm mastery - USA, China, Russia, India, and Europe. Articles on AI and ethics usually highlight three levels: first, the assertion that AI should benefit the common good, considering job creation and losses. This assumption requires validation. Second, major AI players (Microsoft, OpenAI, Google) promote potential revolutionary benefits, such as universal cancer cures or affordable personal medication, which also need validation. These developments depend on feeding data models and specialized algorithms, but the outcome may be catastrophic. Furthermore, at the third level, AI's military applications are ominous, with details typically undisclosed to the public. Interested readers can explore more in the AI and Ethics Journal published by Spr...
Read more

Some good learning resources for free !!

Hey, good news friends ! The MIT puts a lot of resources online for free ! check the opencourseware policy of the university online . That's at least a super example of what European institutions and universities should propose...isn't that all public money after all ?
Read more

Applying systems design principles to business

A system is a collection of elements that interact to produce an effect that cannot be produced by any subset of the elements. This interesting definition of what is a system guides Haeckel to define the synergy (the glue between the elements): Defining synergy as a result that is "more than the sum of the parts" is closer to the mark. This definition, for example, is what the corporate office of the General Electric Company (GE) achieves by lowering the cost of doing business for its subsidiaries. Because they are part of GE's portfolio, the subsidiaries benefit from the economies of scope that come from sharing the GE logo: GE's AAA investment rating, GE's worldwide telecommunications network, and GE's 'boundaryless' knowledge, to name some of the assets that are shared accross units. The result is that the units are more profitable as part of GE than they would be as separate entities, which means that GE's revenue and profit are more than the s...
Read more